But whatever suspicion he may have framed about his guest, it did not keep him awake, and soon his regular breathing formed an accompaniment to Dick's night thoughts. Not that they were very coherent. The grotesque failure of his plot, whose attempt, you must admit, had taken some resolution, left him physically exhausted and emptied. He lay crushed almost beyond feeling, while the hours that were left him to find a solution passed.
Consciousness of this flight of time forced him to bend his will to fresh scheming. But his anxious thought produced nothing more heroic than the decision to ask Norah what to do. After all it was she who had deserted Archie, and she ought to have her say in the handling of him. As soon as it was light he would slip down and lay the matter before her. 'Shift the responsibility on to her,' would have been honester phrasing, for Dick was by now a beaten man.
But even this wouldn't work. The curse of abortion seemed to descend on every plan he devised. If he left at dawn, Archie, his suspicions over the name question reinforced by the gun episode, would be only too glad to start on his way without wasting more time over an unsatisfactory individual who fortunately had disappeared.
And with Archie, intolerable thought, would vanish hope of life. Everything seemed to swing round in a vicious circle to focus the spotlight on the whip in Archie's hand.
Was there no other course than a full confession at the eleventh hour? To wake the man up and say, 'I've seduced your wife, I've told you a pack of lies. I've tried to steal your gun and leave you to starve. Now will you get me out of this hole, please?'
It wasn't thinkable. At the same time, it was inevitable. What else.... What else...."
* * * * * * *
"I have always," said Ross, "felt a profound admiration for the last Earl of Derwentwater who, when his army was surrounded at Preston in the '15, went to bed.
Dick in a similarly untenable position fell asleep."